Spring Around Here

 Spring hasn't really hit around here. It comes for a day or so with it sunshine and warm 60 degree weather and then boom, we get a high of 36 and rain for a whole week. A whole week! And it's end of May/beginning of June. Blah. I'm hoping that the month of June will bring us the warmth that we are craving. I think about 68-72 would be nice. Take into consideration that we don't have air conditioning and I can live with that. Everything is nicer when it's not constantly raining.

We made caprese  salads for the first time at home and it was so easy. I don't know why we've never done it before. Tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, balsamic vinegar and a little salt and pepper. Boom, amazing.

On those rare nice days we take Ariana for walks and let her ride her new bike. We've only been able to take it out about 4 or 5 times in the month that we've owned it. We like the paved walking trail by our village since it's close, but we've also let her ride it around the housing area on base. We can't ride it on our street very easily because we live on such a hill, but she and Richard took a walk/ride down to the local bakery in our village the other day so it can be done.

And with Spring comes the best pets ever. Snails! Ariana love love loves finding snails and I'm right there with her, I think they are pretty darn cute too. We've had snails as pets before and they are so simple. Just make sure you give them some things to munch on (weeds, sticks, cucumber, broccoli) and keep their area damp and they are happy. Unlike our last pet snails that had a ton of snail babies, this time we found a little garden snail and Ariana named her "Sweetie Princess". We only kept her for a few days and then set her free back in our garden by the lilies I'm waiting to see bloom.

Our garden is blooming pretty nicely, even though some of the flowers have been overwatered by the rain and the fact that they don't have enough drain holes on the bottom of the pots. I always kill ranunculus and it's a pity because I think they are such pretty flowers. Our apple trees were even finally blooming not that long ago.

Weekend Walk

This past weekend it was a nice sunny day. Something that's rare around these parts. Since it was so sunny and beautiful we decided we would go for a walk and we knew there was a walking trail by Ariana's preschool. 

What started off as a walk in the woods (so we thought) quickly became an actual recreational park with a playground, lake, and restaurant. Apparently we walked from Makenbach village to Ramstein village and stumbled upon a fun area for future picnics and day outings!

We saw wild ducks, turtles and even some tadpoles and fish in the lake. Of course all the flowers are in bloom now and it was great to get out and have some quality family time in the sunshine.

Currently: May edition

Enjoying popsicles on every warm sunshiney day I get. This Sprite and gummy bear one was interesting.

Saying a lot of names out loud to feel them out for our little one.

Reading The Bell Jar. It starts out slow and then suddenly seems to take a turn towards weird. I'm about half way so far.

Pleased to have worked with The Shopping Mama website taking photographs.

Debating on taking a last mini vacation for the summer.

Driving a lot. To base. To school. To dance. To gymnastics. It seems like I'm spending so much time in the car lately.

Happy that Game of Thrones is back on TV.

Narrating the Magic Treehouse book series to Ariana.

Wondering if we should move on base.

Checking the calendar a lot these days. We've been so busy.

Preparing to make another photo book (similar to this one)

Wishing I had an iphone mainly just for instagram.

Loving caprese salads.

Watching our rhubarb grow.

Searching online for rhubarb recipes.

Growing and Gardening

It seems that I have fall babies and when this happens I hit my second trimester around spring time. I get the incredible urge to garden. I usually always have some pretty flowers planted outside in the spring/summer but something about pregnancy makes me want to go over the top. So 2 weeks ago or so we bought up a whole bunch of pretty colorful flowers and redid are backyard pot garden.

Ariana had so much fun digging in the dirt with her hands and finding earthworms. She cooed at them and gave them names and put them in our pots after we planted all our flowers.

And of course since it was a nice day out (rare in Germany these days) we took a few outside shots of the 19 week baby belly!

Holland (part 2) Keukenhof Flower Garden

The main reason for our trip to Holland was to go to the Keukenhof Gardens and see the tulips - and for me to photograph them. And it didn't disappoint. I've never in my life seen such a beautiful amount of flowers. Thousands and thousands  and hundreds of thousands of flowers sprawling through a maze of walkways and waterways. It was such a glorious garden, and at times a bit overwhelming.

I narrowed my photos down a lot for this post but it's still very photo heavy. I tried to give a variety of flowers so you could feel like you saw the gardens too. 

Of course the day we went, we got rained on. But the flowers were happy and the raindrops made for interesting closeups. 

There were ducks wandering between the people and baby ducks swimming in the fountains. See a pic of one of the cute baby ducks here.. 

It wasn't just tulips either. There were all kinds of flowering trees and lots of brightly colored flowers blooming everywhere.

There were pink tulips, red tulips, strange mixed colored tulips. Rainbow rows of tulips. Probably every tulip that ever grows.

There were flowers so dark they almost appeared black and little hearts hanging low to the ground. 

Everyone was ducked under umbrellas, but that didn't slow them down. People just kept pouring in the see the world famous "Spring Garden".

There was even a little petting zoo with pigs, goats, chickens, cows, and sheep. Ariana was determined to try to pet a chicken but they were too fast for her. She made fast friends with the pigs and the goats though.

After spending a morning in the wet gardens we were heading out to spend the afternoon in a nearby windmill town (that post will be tomorrow). As we were leaving the Keukenhof Gardens, we passed this beautiful red field of tulips and we had to pull over to take pictures. 

These weren't part of the Keukenhof, so we aren't sure who they belonged to but they made it clear they didn't want people traipsing through their tulips.

Ariana played photographer and snapped this picture of us. Pretty good, don't you think? I can't believe I let her hold my camera, even for that minute!

We spotted a rouge yellow tulip blooming in a sea of red.

It was a wonderful morning and if you made it through this post, thanks! I know it was VERY photo heavy but hopefully you enjoyed them and felt like you had a mini visit to the Keukenhof!

Part 3, the old windmill town and wooden shoe shop will be up tomorrow.

Part 1 - Holland's North Sea